


came in here for a special offer

by cnaught



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Comfort, Domestic, Established Relationship, Existential Crisis, Happy Ending, M/M, do you ever just like panic a little bit because you realize that the future exists? yeah me too, domestic argument, flangst, fluff?, rated for swearing mostly, the muesli did nothing wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-08 18:49:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18629161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cnaught/pseuds/cnaught
Summary: When you finally move in with your boyfriend after being long distance, you expect it to be all cuddles and loving gazes and fucking on every surface — and, okay, there’s some of that, but there’s also — dark hair in the shower drain, too many dirty dishes, weird smells and restless sleep, a box of condoms tossed in the shopping cart between the tea and shaving cream and —“Is this it?” Yuri chokes. Otabek, almost at the end of the aisle, stops and turns. “Is this what our life is now?”





	came in here for a special offer

**Author's Note:**

> Title is (ofc) from [The Clash.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsrEAWcAvRg) Imagine my delight when I remembered that there is a classic punk song about having an existential crisis in a supermarket. It's almost like I planned it. (I did not plan it)  
> 

“Okay,” he says, grindingly patient, “but will you eat that much? Because it makes no sense to pay more for an amount that will go to waste.”

Yuri clenches his jaw. “It’s less by weight,” he reiterates, because that is his whole fucking point. “It’s _economical.”_

Otabek’s flat gaze says that this is somehow, simultaneously, both disappointing and exactly what he expected. “More total,” he points out. Accurately. Yuri scowls, ready to press the argument, when Otabek seems to abruptly give up. “Baby, if you want that much muesli, go ahead.” He leans his forearms on the cart and waits. It’s been a long day — a long week — this time of the season is always exhausting, and Beka won’t say anything but Yuri can tell his ankle is bothering him again, and —

Yuri turns to the shelf. He checks the expiration on the larger package, does a rough calculation in his head. He could finish it before it went bad, if he ate some every day. It’d almost be worth it to prove the point. But by the end he would be so sick of muesli, the point he’d prove wouldn’t be his own. Cursing under his breath, he plucks the smaller one and throws it into the cart. “We’re just paying more for packaging,” he snarls. “You know?”

“I know.” Otabek at least has the decency not to look smug. Just… tired. “The kitchen is small, Yura. We can’t buy in bulk like we’re a family of eight.” The matter closed, he turns, pushing the cart down the aisle.

Yuri stays rooted to the spot. When you finally move in with your boyfriend after being long distance, you expect it to be all cuddles and loving gazes and fucking on every surface — and, okay, there’s some of that, but there’s also — dark hair in the shower drain, too many dirty dishes, weird smells and restless sleep, a box of condoms tossed in the shopping cart between the tea and shaving cream and —

“Is this it?” Yuri chokes. Otabek, almost at the end of the aisle, stops and turns. “Is this what our life is now?”

Otabek looks blank. “Right now, yes. Apparently,” he sighs.

“So, what, it’s just — more of this, forever?” Yuri gestures, wild and indistinct. “Just — arguing about muesli and, and toilet paper?”

Otabek pulls the cart slowly behind him as he backtracks. _“Inshallah,”_ he mutters, “one day you’ll understand I’m right, and we won’t have to argue.” The statement is more wry than hopeful, with none of the snotty edge that Yuri would have laid on it, but —

“Fuck you, I’m serious!” he spits. “I — this — this isn’t what I signed up for! What happened to the — the cool guy in the leather jacket, who just — swooped in on his motorcycle, and…” Yuri doesn’t know quite where he’s going, only that he’d thought this was supposed to be simpler. You get the guy of your dreams, kiss, roll credits; none of Mila’s awful romance movies had prepared him for all this aftermath, the lifetime of tedious negotiation and petty grievance that he sees spooling out in front of him.

Otabek looks like he’s _there,_ like he’s actually paying attention, for maybe the first time that night, and it feels pretty shitty that the only way to get that is to make him worry. “That’s me,” he murmurs. “But also I need groceries. Yura, are you okay?”

“Just — fucking —” Yuri tilts his head upward, blinks furiously at the awful fluorescent lights. He is _not_ crying in the goddamn cereal aisle. That’s not how his night is going to go.

Warm knuckles brush along his jaw, and Yuri squeezes his eyes shut. The voice, quiet and very close, as fingers glide soothing to his nape. “It’s not about muesli, is it.”

He could almost laugh. “No,” he croaks, “I guess not.”

“Okay.” It’s disgusting, really, how two syllables can drift in gentle and settle at the base of Yuri’s spine, better than a month of therapy. “Let’s maybe not do this right here,” Beka suggests. Yuri opens his eyes to see that they are blocking the aisle. A chorus of dirty looks follows when they leave.

He trails behind as Otabek maneuvers the cart to the front of the store and explains to the desk clerk that, how foolish, he seems to have come in without his wallet, if she would just hold the cart for a few minutes, thank you so much…

Otabek steps outside, settles on the curb next to Yuri, who has his forehead pressed to his knees and is counting as he breathes — in for four, hold for seven, out for eight…. About a dozen repetitions, until he feels steady enough to uncurl a little and set his chin on top of his folded arms.

Otabek is quiet next to him. He’s always been good at that, setting silences for Yuri to fill. It differentiates him from almost everyone else in Yuri’s life; where he usually has to shout just to be heard, Otabek listens, in a way that challenges him to actually think about what he’s saying, makes him embarrassed to just yell random garbage. It doesn’t help now. He doesn’t know how to put words to what he’s feeling. The silence hangs uncomfortable around them.

Eventually Otabek speaks. “I’m sorry if you feel you’ve been lied to.”

Startled, Yuri looks over. Otabek is picking at his nails, absentminded, a habit when he’s nervous or upset. “Bait and switch, or…”

“No,” Yuri cuts in. He shakes his head for emphasis. “No, I — you’re a person, obviously. That’s — I’m not mad about that.”

“Okay.” He doesn’t sound reassured, but the defensive edge softens from his tone. He shoves his hands into his pockets. “But you’re not happy.”

Yuri leans back and sighs. He speaks slowly, trying to choose words with care. “Do you ever think that we’ve, like, found a pattern? And now we’re just going to be — doing the same thing, over and over, until we’re like eighty?”

Otabek frowns, creased brow and the wells of his eyes making dramatic shadows under the amber street lights. “You’re bored.”

“I’m not _bored_ of you, idiot.” The motorcycle comment was a mistake. The downside of someone who listens is that he listens just as seriously to the dumb shit that Yuri doesn’t mean. “Just. Do you ever, like. Think about that?” He waves a hand: the dark parking lot, drifting orphan carts, the two of them sitting on the curb in the cold. “Just — this? Forever?”

Otabek is quiet for a long time. Long enough for Yuri to start worrying. Maybe he hadn’t thought about it before, but now that Yuri’s brought it up he’s realizing that he’s attached himself to a freak who throws tantrums in the middle of the supermarket, and —

“That’s the dream,” he murmurs. There’s something so wistful in his tone that Yuri’s breath catches. “Right?” He turns to Yuri, dark eyes shining, soft with conviction.

 _Forever_. “Oh.” His voice wavers. “Oh — I —” _Fuck._ He buries his face in his arms.

Otabek’s hand tentatively finds his shaking shoulder, after a while. “Is that bad?”

He doesn’t know when Otabek has ever sounded so uncertain. Christ, pull it together, Plisetsky. He wipes his stupid eyes. “It’s not bad,” he grumbles. “That’s the problem.”

The blank bemusement on his face is so pure Yuri could almost laugh again. _“Zhanym,”_ he mutters, and that’s it, Yuri’s done; he curls into Beka’s side, twists his fingers into the fabric of his sweatshirt. Beka adjusts, rebalancing the added weight easily. His arm settles around Yuri’s shoulders. “I’m really trying to understand,” he says into Yuri’s hair.

Yuri breathes deep, smelling warm cotton and detergent and Beka’s body, with just a hint of cigarette butts from the pavement beneath. “I never really thought about the future before.” Growing up, it had been like running on sand: first dad, then mom, then Grandma… And skating is always contingent. If you qualify, if you place well enough, if you master that jump, if the sponsors bite, if your body doesn’t crap out on you… Otabek is the first thing he’s been able to count on, long-term, maybe ever. “It’s _scary.”_

He hums. Cool fingers smooth Yuri’s hair back. “Are you afraid that things will change?” His voice is a low indistinct buzz, deep in his chest. “Or that they won’t?”

“Yes,” Yuri responds grimly.

Beka laughs, a short puff of air on top of Yuri’s head. He lays a kiss, soft, at his hairline. “I love you.”

Yuri snuggles into his chest. If there’s one thing he could ask to please not change… “I love you too.”

“I wouldn’t want to argue about muesli with anyone else.”

The tone, sincere and warm, tells Yuri it’s not quite a joke. “Fuck _off,”_ he growls, traitor eyes prickling. Beka laughs again, then nestles into Yuri’s hair, arm firm around his shoulders. His breath warms Yuri’s scalp; his heart beats steady and constant under Yuri’s ear.

Yuri’s leg is starting to go numb the next time Otabek speaks. “Do you think we can finish shopping now?” he asks. “Or — I can, if you want to —”

“No.” Yuri disentangles himself with some regret. “I mean, yeah.” He stands, offers Beka a hand up. “I want to pick the yogurt.”

They finish the shopping — Yuri insists that an existential meltdown must be treated with ice cream; Beka rolls his eyes, but says he won’t tell Lilia — and, on the way out, they pass the same spot on the pavement. Yuri’s distracted, already cataloguing the ways he will make Beka tremble and gasp when they are alone together, surfaces in the apartment that they haven’t tried; he’s caught off guard when Otabek stops him with a quiet, solemn “Yura.”

He turns. In the dim sodium light, Otabek looks like he’s made of edges and shadow; an apparition, something that can’t possibly be real. “What you said earlier,” he intones. “When we’re eighty.” He shifts a little, and the light spills over his shoulder, across his cheek, catches in his eyelashes, frames the serious set of his mouth. “I’m game if you are,” he says. So blunt it’s almost a challenge, like the first day they met: _are we friends or not?_ Yuri hadn’t known him well enough then to read it as nerves.

He stares for a second too long, then shakes his head, short and sharp. “No way,” he spits. “Absolutely fucking not. _Otabek.”_ He half-gestures, abortive — if his hands weren’t full of grocery bags he doesn’t know what he’d do. Grab Beka by the shoulders and shake him, maybe; or just hold on, tight. “You are not fucking _proposing_ to me in a fucking _grocery store parking lot._ That is _not a thing.”_

Otabek blinks. Tension, barely perceptible in his shoulders and jaw, eases. “Right,” he says after a moment, so even and composed that it verges on annoying. “Of course. How could I forget, that’s the — second rule.” To Yuri’s _what the fuck are you talking about_ look, he hitches the grocery bag onto his wrist so he can count off on his fingers. One: “No sex until the third date.” Two: “Don’t propose in a parking lot.”

Yuri shakes his head again. They hadn’t followed the third-date rule either. “So fucking weird,” he mutters, and leans in for a kiss. If Beka noticed that he’d only objected to the location, he’s clever enough not to point it out. “Take me home already,” he purrs. Beka kisses him once more, like a promise, and then obliges.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Inshallah_ means "God willing." Idk how actually likely it is that a Kazakh Muslim would swear in Arabic, but I liked the flow of it. If you have the knowledge & inclination to educate me in the comments, please do. (or comment about anything else you feel like)  
> Thanks for reading. I hope it was worth your time. ♥


End file.
